The basis for this blog name is me NOT liking tomatoes. I’ve now tried caprese salad – twice! – and enjoyed it. The first one I devoured. All of it. The second, tonight, was giant but I left quite a dent.

No one expected me to become a writer. I was supposed to become a pharmacist, then a microbiologist, and then a computer specialist. The career of “writer,” for whatever reason, was never mentioned.

Often I have wondered how things might have turned out differently had I been guided at an earlier age. I wish, when thinking about my days spent in youth, that someone had given me words of advice specific to a writer – a bit of inspiration, a smidgen of insight on going forward. How I would have held on to those words and cherished them. How I would have believed that they applied to me, to my life.

But no one did and as we all know, unless you want to mire yourself forever in the tangled webs of the past, you need to move on. You didn’t get what you thought you needed in the past…

You know those times when, you swear, you’re really going to get into a rhythm, a schedule? For real this time, I’m going to start getting up on time. I’m going to start going to bed earlier. I’m going to…

Yeah. I’m in one. For the past several nights, my bedtime has been around midnight. Now, you normal people might say, “Yeah, and?” but in fact I can’t often do that anymore. Well, obviously, I can, but I don’t like to. It totally messes with me. So, after finishing a lovely DVD marathon of Boy Meets World Season 1, around midnight, I decided: yeah! This time I’ll do it! I’ll just force myself to get up early, suck it up, and..stuff! Yeah! I even meditated last night (this morning?).

I practice transcendental meditation (TM). TM is unlike other meditation methods in that I’m not forced to clear my mind. Because that’s ridiculous. Our brains work all the time. You can’t just turn it on and off, like a lightbulb. I’ve tried. TM, when you learn it, aims to let you be calm, to let thoughts pass in, and then pass out, and gradually penetrate that deep part of your brain that you almost never use (you don’t use most of it, actually). It relieves the stress (or attempts to) from the surface down. Several studies prove a number of things about it, most of which are positive. Better, less-stressed, more intellectual. All sorts of cool things I won’t bore you with. It’s just 20 minutes, twice a day, repeating a mantra over and over. The mantra is particular to each person, private, your own. I learned TM my senior year of college, and absolutely loved it. After several weeks of regular practice, I started getting at that deep part of myself. I’d repeat the mantra, everything would fade, and all of a sudden my timer would go off. Almost every day, many of us also went to the same space to meditate as a group. I got better meditations with other people and good energy in the room.

Balancing two majors, weekend nights as an EMT, a job at the library, and directing or managing several plays, I was somewhat relieved to be able to learn how to meditate. I was able to keep it up most of the summer, since I interned near home and not crazy hours. It slipped off, and now I rarely remember. And it’s not a save-all anytime: you don’t benefit from just a random session, here or there. So, every once in awhile, I think, Yeah! This time! Tomorrow! This week! On Monday!

This morning, my plan was to get up at 5:30, meditate, ease into the day, shower, make tea, heat up a home-made cinnamon roll for a sweet breakfast, and slide out, arriving at work by about 7.

7:30 – hear music, see post-it note, go to reset, and realize I have a meeting and have to actually get up this time; speed through a shower, put work back in bag, realize I have no time to actually make a lunch, make tea, grab rainjacket, run downstairs with shoes half pulled on.

So, you see my dilemma. Of course I was useless for the better part of the morning until the tea kicked in. I know what I need to do, I just have trouble doing it.

This time, really, I’ll do it. I’ll even set my alarm to reveille to have it blast me out of bed. I’m not military, but my summer camp used bugle songs as a sort of time-keeper, like bells in a school, and there were consequences for missing flag-raising. There wasn’t actually a lot of time between reveille and flag-raising, and the bathroom was always crowded. It was in your best interest to go, and be seen there on time.

I’m a dork, I know. It got me back, though: the other week I was riding the train with my iPod on shuffle, and wouldn’t you know but reveille came on and about scared me out of my seat. Go figure.

PS: please try not to spell “meditate” as “mediate.” They’re so not the same thing. <cough>news writers<cough>

It’s Dad’s birthday today. I sent him an iTunes gift certificate. That feels lame. But he likes music.

Really, I’ll be visiting in a couple weeks. And that’s really the present. Egotistical, you say? You ask any dad what they’d prefer: daughter wins. But it’s his birthday today. So. Gift card. Like I said, the man likes music.

Happy Birthday Dad!!!

Today the negative things – my dad has prostate cancer, I feel like my personal relationships are hanging off the edge of a cliff, realizing I’m having more trouble settling back into the flow at work than I thought I would, all the little things, like leaving my novel in the dust – are outweighing the positive: it’s a beautiful 75F March day, I have a job, I tend to like it, I have a wonderful family, I get to go home soon, I cleaned my apartment desk, I’m working out more and trying to eat healthier. Just that kind of terrible no-good-reason day. And when I wonder if I should have kept that blog, or that one, or just a diary again. What difference does it make?

Well. That, and my brother’s encouragement:

So yeah, life is beautiful and worth it. Dad is fine, though in for a huge ride…Everything works out. Your amazing. I am moving to Hawaii, thats weird. And I love you. Write whatever you want whenever you want. Who cares who reads it?

This blog makes no promises to be entertaining or peppy: as I deal with the tomatoes that life throws at me (I don’t like tomatoes), I write about it. I am a writer by nature, and, as luck would have it, by profession. It’s pretty awesome, though be warned: I get things out of my system by writing, and in the past, that means low posts (low as in blue. blue as in unhappy). But, with some friends’ help and inspiration, I hope to blog about the good things too, the things that remind me that “life is beautiful and worth it.”

So welcome, if you’re still here, at the bottom of the page with me: I am nearly 24, my dad has stage 2 prostate cancer, I am learning to develop an iOS app, and wrote a drafty 50,000 word novel in November. You’ll hear about those, too, if you stick around.

Search for:

Recent Posts

Brief Bio

I'm a writer by nature and profession. I don't like tomatoes, thus having them thrown at me is really no fun. But life throws them, and I deal with them. When this started, they primarily consisted of Dad's prostate cancer, my neck pain, and random thoughts in between. Now, life is throwing my slightly fewer tomatoes, but I try to capture the good and the bad.

Follow Tomatoes via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.